One of the more disturbing pictures in the College's collection features a beautiful young woman carrying a plate with a ghastly surprise laid out on it. This is Santa Lucia (Saint Lucy) with eyes both in her head and on the plate. Perhaps we should call her 'four eyes'?

Our picture combines two types of painting - genre scenes of misers (ultimately derived from 'The Banker and his Wife' by Quentin Metsys (1514) now in the Louvre, Paris) and seventeenth century Dutch still-life scenes.

Benjamin Franklin has long been credited with the invention of bifocals, but whether this is historically accurate or merely a partisan myth is a matter of debate. Most serious historians now agree that, whilst it is a genuine possibility, the hard evidence is simply lacking.